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Tyr – A historical and comparative study of configurations and formations connected to the Old Norse god Tyr. Klas af Edholm

This thesis has two aims. One is a discussion of the history of the study of Old Norse religion and related aspects, centered on how general tendencies within the area of research have affected the interpretations of the god *Tīwaz/Tyr. Thereby, it treats a selection of influential trends of interpretation, and a selection of prominent scholars of the field. The second aim is an empirical and comparative analysis of the Old Norse source material and, to some degree, the continental Germanic, the Baltic, and the other Indo-European material. Tyr has been interpreted according to trends of research in the field; the mythological character has been used as a projection screen of the theories. Already from the beginning, Tyr was interpreted as a sky god; connected to this was the conception of an original high god. The interpretations of Tyr as a sun god, sky god, and/or law god are close related to this high god conception. These interpretations of the god Tyr has built their arguments upon the etymological connection to Indo-European words for ‘heaven, celestial’ and ‘god’, but they have not taken enough consideration of the Old Norse sources. Georges Dumézil interpreted Tyr, according to his système tripartite, as a law god. This understanding of the god has been widely adopted, but cannot be confirmed; the Old Norse material only speaks of Tyr as a war god. The comparative Indo-European etymological material indicates that his function as sky god is archaic, while the martial traits shared with the continental Germanic and Celtic counterparts prove that this characteristic must have evolved early. Tyr (or rather his predecessor *Tīwaz) lost his celestial traits and became an unmitigated war god, and as such we perceive him in the Old Norse religion.

This thesis analyses the late-Vedic goddess Śrī and her non-personified precedent śrī ‘splendour, glory, excellence, fortune’. Śrī has not before been studied in the light of the Avestan royal splendour, xᵛarənah, and is often interpreted one-sidedly as a pre-Aryan goddess of prosperity. In contrast, this thesis locates the genealogy of Śrī’s characteristics in the Vedic goddess of dawn. The meaning of light in Vedic poetic and sacrificial terminology is highlighted, especially in the relation between royal patron and priest-poet. Śrī’s relation to terms like varcas and tejas, the “shining fame” of the hero, and epic descriptions of blazing warriors, are discussed. The nimbus in early Indian iconography is compared to descriptions of royal splendour in the texts. A subsistent theme in epics, myths and Vedic rituals is identified: the splendour won, lost and recovered by the king. This paradigm is showed to be dependent on the truthfulness, sacrificial status and asceticism of the king. A new understanding of central events in the royal consecration ritual, in the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata are thereby offered. It is argued that a continuous and richly varied concept of royal splendour can be identified, from the Ṛgveda to the great epics, and that it is of considerable importance in the ancient Indian rulership ideology.

The ”vrātya problem” has been discussed for more than a century. It is not clear who the vrātya is, as some Vedic passages describe him in a cryptic manner. That the vrātya continues to engage scholars is demonstrated by two recent publications, both with T. Pontillo as one of the editors: The Volatile World of Sovereignty: The Vrātya Problem and Kingship in South Asia (2015), and Vrātya Culture in Vedic Sources (2016). In this review article I look at the two volumes in context of previous reseach and discuss a handful of the contributions. I also refer to a number of vrātya-related articles published elsewhere.

Ritual is often seen as a safe and certain of success. That the question of risk and failure is important for our understanding of ritual has, however, been argued by an increasing number of scholars. This article analyses two Vedic śrauta rituals - the horse-sacrifice and the royal consecration - from this perspective. According to brahmanic theory, sacrifice implies a dangerous break-up of cosmic structure; once started, a ritual must be successfully brought to an end, or the performer will come out lesser than before. Royal ritual also involves political dangers: being a claim to overlordship, rivals might oppose and defeat the sacrificer. Śrauta ritual appears not as a microcosm devoid of danger and unknown outcome. Rather, risk increases a ritual’s value and is an essential part of Vedic royal ritual, wherefore the most awesome sacrifice has the highest risk factor. Danger and conflict in śrauta ritual reflect the aristocratic-agonistic culture in which it evolved.

6.

Af Edholm, Kristoffer

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, History of Religions.

The article explores, from an Indo-Iranian comparative perspective, the concept of 'royal splendour' and its role in myth, ritual and political discourse, in ancient Indian and Iranian texts. It argues that there are similarities both on the level of details (terminology, imagery, motifs) and on a broader level (ruler ideology), some of which likely go back to Proto-Indo-Iranian culture. The article relates the Avestan xvarenahto the Vedic sri- and varcas-, as well as their Avestan counterparts sri- and varecah-. It looks at how the Vedic/Avestan epithet apam. napat-/apam napat- is connected to the motif of aquatic and royal splendour. The Avestan concept of royal splendour, it is argued, also shares key characteristics with the late Vedic and early epic goddess Sri. As the fickle and mobile consort of successive kings, whom she approaches or abandons depending on their virtues, the epic Sri is reminiscent of xvarenah-.

The conditions for the creation, distribution and reception of myths have changed drastically during the late modern era. Do myths exist at all in the contemporary, Western societies? If so, where are they and what do we then mean by “myth”? The article is a sketchy overview of different areas where myths might be found, and the author simultaneous tries to discuss relevant definitions of myth. From the conceptualization of myth in the Enlightenment and Romantic era the article moves on to discuss the reception of mythology in New Age spirituality, the invention of Nationalist mythologies and the issue of myths in the products of the Culture industry and commerce. The main focus is on the debatable issue wither or not the liberal, “post-politic” discourse of contemporary Westerns democracies – a discourse often presented as drained of any fantastic rhetoric and only concerned with practical, instrumental decisions – could be said to contain myths.

10.

Arvidsson, Stefan

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, History of Religions.

Scholars agree that the imagination is central to esoteric practice. While the esoteric vis imaginativa is usually attributed to the influx of Neoplatonism in the Italian Renaissance, this article argues that many of its key properties were already in place in medieval scholasticism. Two aspects of the history of the imagination are discussed. First, it is argued that esoteric practice is rooted in a broader kataphatic trend within Christian spirituality that explodes in the popular devotion literature of the later Middle Ages. By looking at the role of Bonaventure’s “cognitive theology” in the popularization of gospel meditations and kataphatic devotional prayer, it is argued that there is a direct link between the scholastic reconsideration of theimaginative faculty and the development of esoteric practices inspired by Christian devotional literature. Secondly, it is argued that the Aristotelian inner sense tradition of the scholastics left a lasting impression on later esoteric conceptualizations of the imaginative faculty. Examples suggesting evidence for both these two claims are discussed. The article proposes to view esoteric practices as an integral part of a broader kataphatic stream in European religious history, separated out by a set of disjunctive strategies rooted in the policing of “orthopraxy” by ecclesiastical authorities.

The imagination is central to esoteric practices, but so far scholars have shown little interest in exploring cognitive theories of how the imagination works. The only exception is Tanya Luhrmann's interpretive drift theory and related research on mental imagery cultivation, which has been used to explain the subjective persuasiveness of modern ritual magic. This article draws on recent work in the neuroscience of perception in order to develop a general theory of kataphatic (that is, imagery based) practice that goes beyond the interpretive drift theory. Mental imagery is intimately linked with perception. Drawing on "predictive coding" theory, the article argues that kataphatic practices exploit the probabilistic, expectation-based way that the brain processes sensory information and creates models (perceptions) of the world. This view throws light on a wide range of features of kataphatic practices, from their contemplative and cognitive aspects, to their social organization and demographic make-up, to their pageantry and material culture. By connecting readily observable features of kataphatic practice to specific neurocognitive mechanisms related to perceptual learning and cognitive processing of mental imagery, the predictive coding paradigm also creates opportunities for combining historical research with experimental approaches in the study of religion. I illustrate how this framework may enrich the study of Western esotericism in particular by applying it to the paradigmatic case of " astral travel" as it has developed from the Golden Dawn tradition of ritual magic, especially in the work of Aleister Crowley.

This essay intends to examine how three Swedish newspapers report about religion. The research has been undertaken about spirituality, religion and secularism relating to the years 2010 until 2015. The study also has the aim of investigating the Swedish ambivalence, both in the past and currently, to religious questions. The study demonstrates that even if secularity is strong in Sweden, many Swedish people are bound to the Church and embrace a personal faith.

The paper treats three individuals (Sarah Bernhardt, the Italian marchioness Luisa Casati and silent film actress Theda Bara) during the years 1880–193. Both onstage and offstage they actively assumed the role of the demon woman, an endavour which to a varying extent also incorporated satanic motifs. They chose—or, in one case, were chosen—to embody the (more or less supernatural) femme fatale, constructed by male authors and artists, and seemingly felt this was enjoyable, empowering or useful for commercial purposes. My analysis attempts to tease out some of the implications this enacting of a sinister stereotype had on an individual level as well as in a broader cultural context.

Bernhardt wore a bat hat and serpent jewelry, at times derided Christianity and even sculpted a self-portrait of herself as Satan or a demon. Casati practiced magic and threw curses, dressed up as Satan in the Garden of Eden, commissioned a mural of herself as Eve consorting with Lucifer, and organized parties with staff in devil costumes. Bara was presented by the Fox publicity department as a real-life demon woman, and in her films played vampiric femme fatales who punished and tormented males. Many of the films had titles where Satan was mentioned, and in one of them she even turned out to literally be the Devil in disguise.

The choice of demonic imagery for these identity games tells us something about exactly what the taboos and limits these women consciously transgressed and mocked were tied up with: conservative Christian values. Embracing demons, satanic serpent motifs, and the macabre thus functioned as a critique of such values, and was one of the registers of symbolic resistance available for rebellious women to draw on at the time. In Bara’s case, the demonic persona was not devised by herself, but is an example which is of more interest because of the audience response to it and what it says about shifts in use of Satan as a marker of female rebellion. Satanism, or flirting with the satanic, is always a language of resistance to conventions, which may be more or less articulate when it comes to specific cultural criticism. The use of Gothic and Satanic symbolism by fiercly independent women would accordingly have resonated with notions in the wider culture, and, with figures as highly public as these using it, must have created echoes far beyond their intimate sphere. It thus strengthened the ties between such symbolism and female emancipation. Taking all this into account, it is reasonable to see these women as participants in the amorphous fin-de-siècle discourse of satanic feminism.

27.

Faxneld, Per

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, History of Religions.

In turn-of-the-century France, the ongoing battle between the Catholic Church (which had traditionally been in charge of caring for the insane) and the developing discipline of psychiatry gave rise to lively debates concerning the nature of demonic possession and witchcraft. Psychiatrists claimed such phenomena, in past eras as well as in contemporary times, could be explained as expressions of hysterical conditions. Some Catholics, on the other hand, saw hysteria as a sign of demonic activity. Hysteria and the demonic were in turn used all over Europe to stigmatize feminists, who in conservative discourses were frequently metaphorically described as shrieking, hysterical witches or even, literally or implicitly, in league with Satan.

The sulfurous connotations of feminism were given support by some feminists, like Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898), describing medieval witchcraft as a form of laudably anti- patriarchal Satanism – but fiercely denying witches were hysterics, in order to reject the negative stereotyping of feminists as mentally ill or aberrant. When a woman expressed sympathy for the Devil, as for example the radical individualist feminist Mary MacLane (1881–1929) did in an autobiographical book in 1902, male reviewers predictably held her up as hysterical and mentally ill, thus attempting to dismiss her subversive ideas and Satanic cultural critique as proof of a pathological condition.

Other men, like the Berlin-based Decadent Satanist Stanislaw Przybyszewski (1868–1927), took a different stance, and celebrated what others called degeneration, evil and hysteria. To him, all this was essential for the evolution of the species. He affirmed the connection between Satan, women and hysterical, ecstatic states of mind, but elevated Satan to a patron of progress in science and art.

The paper explores the conflation of Satanism and the medical diagnosis of hysteria in nineteenth century culture, and attempts to tease out some of the gendered implications the bringing together of the two had at the time.

32.

Faxneld, Per

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, History of Religions.

During the nineteenth century, socialists all over the Western world employed Satan as a symbol of the workers’ emancipation from capitalist tyranny and the toppling of the Christian Church, which they perceived as a protector of this oppressive system. Starting with the English Romantics at the end of the eighteenth century, European radicals developed a discourse of symbolic Satanism, which was put to use by major names in socialism like Godwin, Proudhon, and Bakunin. This shock tactic became especially widespread in turn-of-the-century Sweden, and accordingly the article focuses on the many examples of explicit socialist Satanism in that country. They are contextualized by showing the parallels to, among other things, use of Lucifer as a positive symbol in the realm of alternative spirituality, specifically the Theosophical Society. A number of reasons for why Satan gained such popularity among socialists are suggested, and the sometimes blurry line separating the rhetoric of symbolic Satanism from actual religious writing is scrutinized.

This chapter presents the Satanism propagated by the Decadent author Stanislaw Przybyszewski (1868–1927), and interprets the role women play in it. Unlike other literary Satanists, Przybyszewski's sympathy for the Devil was sustained through many works, he publicly declared himself a Satanist and the ideas were well-developed enough to be called a system. Przybyszewski, the chapter argues, was therefore “the first Satanist” in a strict sense. The core themes in his thinking are a celebration of evolution (anchored in social Darwinism) and sexual lust, a pessimist view of human existence, and lastly a nihilist anarchist will to destruction, all presented using a shock tactic of semantic inversion typical of the Decadent movement, turning “evil”, “degeneration” and other usually obviously negative words into designations for something positive. Reading Przybyszewski's seemingly misogynist texts about witches within this framework, a plausible interpretation is that he is not at all slandering her but rather pays homage to her as a vitally necessary representative of the evolutionary “good evil” his system is centered around.

In postcolonial Burma, two trends within lay Buddhism — largely in tension with one another — developed into large-scale movements. They focused upon different meditation practices, insight meditation and concentration meditation, with the latter also including esoteric lore. An impetus largely shared by the movements was to define an “authentic” Buddhism to serve as the primary vehicle of the quest for individual, local, and national identity. While insight meditation was generally considered Buddhist meditation par excellence, concentration meditation was ascribed a more dubious Buddhist identity. Given this ambiguity, it could be considered rather paradoxical that concentration meditation could be viewed as a source of “authentic” Buddhism. The aim of this article is to investigate the issue of identity and the paradox of authenticity by examining the concentration meditation practices of one large esoteric congregation and tentatively comparing its practices with those of the insight meditation movement. It will be argued that the movements represented two varieties of so-called modern Buddhism (rationalist modern Buddhism and esoteric modern Buddhism) drawing on different Buddhist imaginaries and representing two main trends that are largely diametrically opposed to one another. They therefore represent two ways of constructing an individual, local, and national identity.

In the early post-independence period in Burma, a large number of hierarchical, initiatory, and secretive esoteric congregations were founded by charismatic leaders in urban areas. These attracted many devotees, including representatives of the state. The relationship between the state and the esoteric congregations was tense, especially during the rule of the military governments (1962–2011), and the state sought to suppress the congregations in the early 1980s.In this article, one esoteric congregation—the ariyā-weizzā organization—is taken as an example of these congregations. First, the article demonstrates how the members of this congregation view themselves as performing the state, and shows what kind of power they perceive themselves to exercise. Second, in socio-political terms, the article seeks to explain why tensions emerged between the state and the esoteric congregations, and it demonstrates how these congregations have contributed to performing the state.

Following the global spread of capitalism from the early 1990s, individualistic, non-institutionalised prosperity religion and occult economies' have emerged throughout the world, including South-East Asia, but have seemingly not yet been investigated with respect to Burma/Myanmar. This article focuses on the cult of the guardians of the treasure trove - a form of prosperity Buddhism' - in Upper Burma, wherein predominantly business women of lower middle classes perform possession dances to become successful in business. It has partly evolved from the lower status traditional' possession cult of the 37 Lords. The aim of this article is threefold. Firstly, it examines novel kinds of Buddhicised' possession rituals of higher status that discard religious specialists. These practices represent a democratisation of public spirit-mediumship and provide a route for success in business, agency and empowerment. Secondly, it is demonstrated that these cults seek to preserve Buddhism in the face of the current rapid changes in Burma. Thirdly, this article shows how these novel cults emerged in dynamic interplay with recent economic, social and political changes in Burma, as well as an increasing impact of globalisation.

Following the global spread of capitalism in the early 1990s and an increasing impact of globalization, novel kinds of prosperity religions have emerged in Southeast Asia, including Burma/Myanmar. In the latter, it has entailed a gradual transformation of the religious field, with new movements, material infrastructure, rituals and imaginary. After the collapse of the socialist planned economy of General Ne Win’s government, SLORC-SPDC, another military government, seized power in 1988, which implemented modernization programs and a limited market economic system. In interplay with increasing globalization and the gradual development of a capitalist system in the 1990s, a number of “Buddhist” prosperity cults have emerged in Burma/Myanmar and have mushroomed quite recently, especially since 2011, at which time a semi-democratic government replaced the military dictatorship and has implemented a further liberalization of the economy. This paper will demonstrate that a variety of changes in the field of religion in Burma have occurred in interplay with the aforementioned social, economic and political transformations, and will especially focus on a novel kind of possession rituals, in which devotees engage to become successful in business and the like. Moreover, this paper will argue that such phenomena –prosperity religion/Buddhism –can be more conservative than what has otherwise been assumed.

42.

Foxeus, Niklas

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies, History of Religions.

Following the global spread of capitalism and increasing impact of cultural globalization since the 1990s, prosperity religion, nationalist movements, and religious fundamentalism have emerged throughout the world. This article argues that such global tendencies intersect in certain forms of “prosperity Buddhism” that have emerged in recent years in Burma/Myanmar. As this article demonstrates, a novel Buddhist imaginary linked to prosperity Buddhism has evolved that represents a transformation of previous notions. The article argues that it can serve as a resource mainly for women to get success in business and can provide them with a way to negotiate Buddhist identity and acquire a sense of ontological security in rapidly changing urban areas. It can also serve as a means for social control and maintaining hegemonic power relations. For ritual specialists, these novel cults serve as the recurrent strategy of saving the Buddha’s dispensation in the face of rapid change.

In early postcolonial Burma, millenarian prophecies about the imminent arrival of Setkya Min, the world emperor, circulated. This exalted personage was expected to protect Buddhism, and usher in a golden age for Buddhism and Burma. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the anthropologists Michael Mendelson and Melford E. Spiro encountered a perplexing phenomenon — a few so-called royal esoteric congregations whose leaders behaved as kings and were treated as such by their followers. These leaders were held to fulfill the prophecies and thus to be impersonations of the powerful figure Setkya Min, a weikza, a future Buddha, and a righteous king.

Mendelson and Spiro understood these congregations as being continuous with the anti-colonial and even the pre-colonial millenarian rebellions. Until now, this interpretation has remained uncontested, probably due to lack of empirical evidence, since most scholars have assumed that these kinds of congregations ceased to exist long time ago. However, there still exists one such congregation in Burma, and was founded in the early 1950s. This article demonstrates how this congregation has waged a "battle" with supernatural means against what it perceived as the evil, anti-Buddhist forces to save Buddhism from extinction, and that it is just as anti-colonial and anti-Western as the anti-colonial rebellions. Moreover, the article argues that this congregation is similar to those studied by Mendelson and Spiro, and that these kinds of congregations should be understood as new Buddhist movements emerging in response to crises of authority and identity, to projects of modernization and nation-building, and to political turmoil in the postcolonial period. These congregations represented a quest for identity (individual, communal, and national), and are comparable to the other new religious movements that emerged in Southeast Asia in the postwar period.